"We need to make work for the theatre that is urgent." "When I watch dance I ask myself, 'Does it really matter?'." I heard both of these comments, one from a theatre director and the other from a dance critic, within the past 12 months. They run round in my head like a mantra, perhaps because they remind me why I formed DV8 Physical Theatre 22 years ago.

I started dancing professionally after studying psychology and social work at university. By my late 20s, I found myself struggling within the aesthetics and the form-obsessed confines of most dance. Connecting meaning to movement and making work that was socially relevant became DV8's underlying ethos. If text, song, set, technology or naturalistic movement could say something more precisely than a dance phrase, then I had no qualms about ditching the "dance".

The more work I made, the more my performers began to talk on stage. I couldn't keep investigating complex issues without reverting to spoken text. How do you say something as simple as "This is my mother's sister" in dance? Why should dance, or words for that matter, be expected to carry the complete burden of communication?

So I found it immensely liberating when Nick Hytner invited the company to perform at the National Theatre in 2005. It was the first time during his directorship that he had invited a company that consisted entirely of trained dancers. As the National isn't considered a dance venue, I felt free from the expectations of dance purists. Under Hytner's direction, movement is respected as much as text.

The National has invited DV8 back this autumn with our new production, To Be Straight With You. This time the text is not fictional but verbatim, based on 85 interviews and a series of vox pops that examine tolerance, intolerance, religion and sexuality. Every word spoken on stage comes from these interviews, which were all conducted in the UK.

There were three main events that prompted me to make the piece. The first incident was back in the early 1990s. My then-boyfriend, who was Indian, and I were on a Gay Pride march that passed through the streets of Brixton. It was extraordinary how many Afro-Caribbean families yelled homophobic abuse at us. We were struck by the fact that people who themselves are part of a minority, many of whom must have experienced racism and racist abuse first-hand, were so willing to be abusive towards another minority. In making this work and returning to Brixton 16 years later to interview people, it became clear that many of these prejudices remain, often justified by religious beliefs.

The second incident was in 2006, when I saw a programme on Channel 4 called Gay Muslim. Two hundred gay Muslims living in the UK were interviewed, yet only one was prepared to publicly show their face. Lastly, I am intrigued by the Anglican Communion's continuing preoccupation with homosexuality and the boycott of the recent Lambeth Conference by anti-gay bishops.

How does a society reconcile religious values if they are at odds with an individual's human rights? Why should religion be protected any more than other belief systems such as secularism, democracy and free speech?

Peter Tatchell, the human rights activist, was accused of censorship and called a racist by some black nationalists and white left-wing liberals when he tried to stop dancehall artists performing songs calling for the killing and torching of gay people. This occurred despite JFLAG (the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All Sexuals and Gays) asking for Tatchell's help and intervention. Examles of these lyrics are "shoot a Battyman [gay man] in the head" or "blaze the fire, let's burn them [gays]". Many dancehall artists profess to be Rastafarians and hold similar beliefs to fundamentalist Christians with regard to homosexuality. Imagine however if the word "gay" were replaced with "black", "Muslim" or "Jew". Would such songs then be sold, as "gay murder music" is, by major retailers?

Finding movement for this piece was particularly difficult because of the subject matter and our commitment to use the interviewees' own words. How do you combine stylized movement with verbatim text? I didn't want to demean the interviewees' stories, which were often harrowing, with "nice" movement phrases. One method of finding appropriate movement was to ask performers to listen to edited interviews on an iPod while simultaneously repeating the interviewee's words out loud. I would then give the performers different physical instructions whilst doing this exercise. Gradually, through this process and many more, I began to see flashes of movement ideas that could be developed for different characters.

I was told by many interviewees, who cited Leviticus or the story of Lot when condemning homosexuality, that I must respect their holy text. In June this year Iris Robinson, a Northern Ireland MP, demonstrated this mindset when she said "just as a murderer can be redeemed by the blood of Christ, so can a homosexual. If anyone takes issue, they're taking issue with the word of God". How can I respect a religion when some advocates of that religion do not offer me equality and, in extreme cases, call for my death? Criticising aspects of a religion should not be confused with condemning a whole religion or its followers. Surely the devil is in the detail. The power of To Be Straight With You is that it overrides sweeping statements: many of the stories don't fit nicely into politically correct, left-wing or right-wing boxes.

Some of our interviewees, particularly from ethnic minority groups, have asked for their identities to be hidden, fearful of the reprisals should their sexuality become known. We cannot pardon discrimination against race, gender or sexual orientation because we fear offending religious or cultural sensitivities. I hope by witnessing To Be Straight With You audiences will also feel a responsibility to challenge prejudice in communities that might not be their own.